The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3)

by Lena Goldfinch

  She floated in his arms, dancing through a slow set that swung her in and out of the center of the floor. She may as well have been a feather caught in the gentlest of whirlwinds. And Jem—Jem was a superb dancer. The fact startled her at first, but she soon was lost in the sure way he led her through the simple flowing steps, never faltering, never stumbling or stepping on her toes. His eyes meeting hers now and again. A small reserved smile sent her way. A tightening of his fingers around hers igniting another small starburst of tingles.

  She was a soap bubble, light and airy, floating.

  And then for one breathless moment, Jem gathered her a little closer. He rested his cheek briefly against her temple. His fingers closed around hers. His thumb brushed the back of her hand. Annie shivered.

  If this is dreaming, she thought, I never—ever—want to wake up.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Annie hummed under her breath all the way back home from the ranch in the darkened wagon. The stars above them were brilliant in a nearly black sky with a tiny sliver of a crescent moon. But all she saw were the lights of the dance. And, in her heart, she was still dancing, lost in the music. She could still feel Jem’s arms around her, the way he’d leaned in close and placed his cheek against her temple. It had been so unexpected. She recalled the sensation of pure awareness, of not being able to breathe properly. Even now it caught at her throat and she skipped a few notes. She didn’t care if her sounds were ugly, not tonight. To her ear, it all sounded fine. She was floating, too happy to care otherwise.

  Three ranch hands came out to meet the wagon, take care of the oxen, and put the rig up. She recognized one as Pole—at least, that was what everyone called him, perhaps because he was so tall and thin. When he helped lower her to the ground, she caught his hands and spun him around with her, feeling alight from within. She didn’t want the dancing to stop. She wanted it to go on and on.

  Pole laughed at her in a good-natured way and set her aside carefully, delivering her to Ben, who’d just climbed down from the back.

  Pole and the others probably thought she was simple. Or that she’d had too much punch. But the fact was she hadn’t. She hadn’t had a single drop, not after that first nose-wrinkling taste. She was simply happy.

  Ben, she signed to him, dance. She swung him around the driveway.

  “It’s too dark for that,” he protested as they tripped over a rocky patch. There was a smile in his voice though, so she knew he didn’t truly mind.

  She saw Jem in the glow of his lantern, which cast striking angular shadows over his face. He was watching them, his expression pleasantly amused. He didn’t come over to dance with her though, much to her disappointment. He simply followed them up the back porch and into the kitchen.

  “I wonder where Ray is,” he said, looking around the empty room. The long farm table was wiped down clean, the wood still glistening with moisture. Above the basin, the dish rack—a contraption with an open wood base frame and vertical slats that were a little wider than a cup’s-width apart—was full of plates, about twelve altogether, lined neatly side by side, filling the rack end to end. The midnight blue and white speckled plates reminded Annie of the stars outside. Pretty.

  She followed Jem and Ben into the parlor, where they found Ray in the rocker by the unlit fireplace, his legs stuck out straight, wearing a pair of dingy white socks with a hole in one toe. His house shoes were sprawled to one side of his chair—haphazardly, as if he’d kicked them off with little care as to where they landed. He too was sprawled out, his head tipped back against the rocker’s flat slats, his eyes shut. His mouth drooped slightly agape, and every once in a while he let out a snore.

  Annie covered a smile.

  “I’ll make sure he gets to bed,” Ben said, waving her and Jem upstairs.

  Let’s look in on Mae and Sugar, she signed to Jem. Sugar may need to go outside.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  But upstairs, Mae’s room was empty, her sheet spilling onto the floor. Her pillow was missing.

  Jem shared a glance with Annie, and they hurried first to his room. Empty. Leaving his door open, they rushed to check Annie’s room across the hall. He didn’t say it aloud, but she was sure they were both thinking the same thing: Mae’s missing, just like before.

  Thankfully, Mae and Sugar were sprawled out on Annie’s bed. Mae had her pillow tucked around her head, her thumb stuck loosely in her mouth. She looked so sweet.

  Sugar lifted her head at the sound of the opening door, but didn’t get up. As soon as she determined they were familiar and posed no threat, she merely stretched and snuggled back into Mae’s side, hogging most of the bed. She sighed the sigh of a dog who had no plans to move until she’d had a good full night’s sleep.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Jem said, nodding at the bed. “I’ll move them back to Mae’s room.”

  As he stepped forward to cross the threshold, Annie grabbed ahold of his arm and pulled him back.

  Leave them, she signed. I can sleep in Mae’s bed. I don’t mind.

  He looked from her to his sleeping daughter and back again, clearly hesitating. “All right. If you don’t mind. Well, then, good night,” he said, holding the lantern so they could see.

  I’m not sleepy, Annie admitted.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked. “I’m too tired for dancing.” His mouth tipped up in a half smile.

  I want to...look at the stars.

  “The stars?”

  She nodded.

  He seemed to be considering this, if the tilt of his head was anything to go by. “Come on,” he said, nodding to his room. “Follow me.”

  He entered his room without looking back, perhaps not realizing how extraordinary it was for him to ask her such a thing. Go to his room? In the dark of the night?

  “We can sit out on the porch roof,” he said, noticing her standing in the hall, unmoving. “It’s perfectly safe.”

  She nodded, as if that had been her only concern.

  Safe? She signed, still unsure if she wanted to climb out onto a steeply sloped roof in her dancing slippers.

  “Of course,” Jem said. He’d already tossed open his window and had one leg swung over. “Come here. I’ll help you out.”

  Of course it was safe. Sitting out on a steep tin roof that was probably as slippery as a frozen waterfall.

  Still, Annie followed him, placing her hands on the windowsill and simply staring out. The tin looked just as slick as she imagined.

  “Kick your shoes off,” he advised. “It’s warm enough out. You won’t need them.”

  She looked up at the sky, an umbrella of sparkling stars. That was enticement enough. She kicked her shoes into the corner and tried to imagine how she could hoist herself onto the windowsill. She certainly couldn’t straddle it as easily as he had. For one thing, she was much shorter, and for another, she had on a full skirt and a limiting corset.

  “Turn around and stick your head out,” was Jem’s advice.

  She stared at him, lifting her brows in her best impression of feminine inquiry.

  “Trust me.”

  She pursed her lips but did as he asked, leaning through the gap, her back pressed awkwardly against the windowsill.

  With a little navigating on his part, Jem helped her hop up on the windowsill and swing her legs around. He deftly caught one edge of her skirt and kept it from riding up to expose her legs as she turned. It seemed a rather gallant act to Annie. Finally, she stood on the roof, pitching forward then back, trying to find her balance. Jem grabbed her hands.

  “Why don’t we sit?” he said.

  Grateful for his assistance, Annie lowered onto the roof and leaned her back against the outside wall. He sat close beside her, possibly so he could reach out and grab her if she started to slide. He lowered the wick on his lantern, and the sky blossomed, black and full of glittering white stars.

  Soon she was lost in the wonder of the sky and nearly forgot that they were a good one-story drop to the
ground below.

  After a long spell of staring up with their heads tipped back against the house, Jem spoke, his voice soft, as if he were concerned it might carry in to wake up Mae or travel across the paddocks into the bunkhouse. “It’s strange. I felt so driven to come here, just months ago. I felt so strongly that this was where I needed to be, but now... Now, I’m not so sure.”

  She was so amazed he was confiding in her she didn’t dare look at him, lest he realize she was listening and stop. Out of the corner of her eye she could see his profile in the night, his gaze up at the stars, as contemplative as his voice.

  “I don’t even know why I’m here. I should start up a new practice in Colorado Springs. They need a good horse doctor. I could travel from ranch to ranch. Treat the carriage horses in town. The workhorses at the mills. I could do that.”

  She waited, all her senses heightened. There was something about sitting out on the metal roof, the unfamiliarity of it, and sitting so close to Jem, listening to him sharing his thoughts. She might ought to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming it.

  “I don’t know,” Jem continued. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Ben doesn’t need me here, not much longer. Not all the time. That mare of his will foal soon enough, and, once that happens, I’ll grow bored. I know I will.”

  Annie made a small sound, surprised at his admission.

  Perhaps he took it as a question, for he said, “At some point I suspect I’ll need to move on. We’ll need to move on.”

  She nodded, unsure if he could see the action.

  “I thought it was important to bring Mae here. Perhaps it was. I just—I just don’t know if I’m meant to stay here. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do. What am I meant to do?”

  You save—that’s what you do. Annie made a series of signs, but he stopped her, holding her hands. She repeated the motions, his hands following hers. His skin making hers tingle in the most alarming way. When he didn’t speak, she repeated the motions again.

  He chuckled, a pleasant sound, and shook his head. “Wait. We need a bit more light.” He reached for the lamp on the other side of him, now barely lit. He turned it up, enough to see her better, but still low enough to appreciate the stars above them.

  Annie repeated her signs. You save—that’s what you do.

  “I save? What do you mean—save?”

  At the train, you saved me. You saved Sugar too. You didn’t know us. You saw it needed to be done. You did it. Annie wasn’t entirely sure Jem understood every sign she made, or even if she’d made all the right ones, but she hoped he understood her meaning.

  “You think I save people?”

  And dogs. She smiled. And horses.

  He didn’t smile back. “My purpose in coming here... Maybe I’m not here for Ben. Not entirely. I may have come here to help you. And Sugar,” Jem said, with a distracted thoughtful air. “Maybe I was...sent.”

  After a while she became aware of Jem’s gaze on her face, taking in all her features, settling on her mouth a little while longer than necessary. She held her breath.

  What—what are you thinking to do? The thought sprang to Annie’s mind, but she kept her hands quiet in her lap. He leaned in closer and fitted his mouth to hers, gently teasing her lips with an oh-so-tender kiss that made her woozy. She lifted one hand and cradled the side of his face. Her fingers skimmed down the side of his jaw, feathering over the soft lines of his beard. Pure sensation.

  Kisses turned to more soft kisses, until she was practically melting into a pool.

  “Annie,” he said hoarsely, his forehead bent to her shoulder, his hand on her arm, holding her against his side. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

  The question sent every rational thought scattering from her mind. Words failed her, and not in the usual sense, but in every sense.

  She didn’t need to ask him to repeat himself. His question still hung in the cool air between them. He lifted his head and kissed her cheek, her jaw, her chin. His mouth trailed down to her neck, to a sensitive spot behind her ear, one she hadn’t realized existed until that moment. She shivered with pure delight, amazed. She was really here, with Jem. She wasn’t dreaming. She was awake. Awake and aware of every little night noise. Noises she couldn’t possibly hear, like the humming of the stars. Jem was kissing her. He was really kissing her. They were married, of course. She knew that. He knew that, but there’d been no indication until this very moment that he thought of her in this way. Not that she’d seen.

  Well, except for those times she caught him watching her. Those times he looked quickly away.

  She’d certainly watched him often enough, wondering if they would ever truly be man and wife, in every way.

  Tonight?

  Tonight, he asks me? Now?

  “Annie?” he repeated, returning his attention to the safer planes of her face, perhaps fearing he’d rushed her...or overstepped.

  She didn’t want him to feel that way. She wanted to stay. She wanted it all. Marriage, love, family. All. He’d made no declarations of love. Not that she’d expressed any such emotion to him. But they were married. If they were to raise Mae together—become a real family—surely this was the most natural of consequences?

  It sounded rational. There was nothing rational about it.

  He started to pull away, his action telling her she’d hesitated too long. Any moment now, he’d help her inside, and she’d return to Mae’s room to sleep the night.

  She’d sleep in Mae’s narrow bed with the sheet pulled up to her chin.

  Who was she fooling? She’d never sleep, not a wink.

  Yes, she signed and tapped his arm once.

  “Yes?”

  She repeated the action.

  * * *

  After, Jem lay in the bed.

  In the darkness, the portrait of Lorelei stared at him from his bedside table. He couldn’t look at it.

  He stared up at the ceiling instead, the top of the sheet clenched in one fist, pressed against his stomach. It was a horrible thing knowing you’d done something wrong.

  I just slept with a woman I barely know. And now I’m thinking about Lorelei.

  He missed her. He missed his wife.

  He’d known Lorelei, everything about her. There’d been no walls, no surprises, no mysteries between them. They’d lived together. Loved. They’d loved a lot, fully and completely. There’d been no shame in the bedroom. What they’d had was right—golden, perfect. Well, not always. But there were times when it approached perfect, when he knew there was nothing else he should’ve been doing besides loving his wife.

  Annie...he barely knew her. They were married and there was no law against them touching one another like they had. Well, like he had, mostly. The Bible wouldn’t have even argued with it. And yet it felt wrong.

  It felt even more wrong because now he knew she’d never been with a man. He’d been her first. He should’ve known. Would’ve gone about it different.

  Should’ve waited.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He had to be man enough to say something. To let her know. “I should’ve known...”

  * * *

  Annie felt Jem’s awkward stillness beside her in his bed. She felt the silence stretch out after his words.

  He was sorry.

  She pondered that in the dark. He’d long since put the lantern out.

  He hadn’t been sorry out on the roof. He hadn’t been sorry when he was kissing her. But moments ago, in his arms, there had been a change that came over him. After the intimacies shared. Some unspoken awareness had passed over him.

  Had she done something wrong?

  As the minutes continued to tick by, she turned his words over in her mind. Sorry.

  He’d fallen silent, but she sensed he wasn’t asleep. His breathing was too shallow.

  She didn’t know what to do. Should she get up? Should she wash? No one had ever told her about this part. Her foster mother had taught her a lot, shared all sorts of things, but
not this exactly. She told Annie the bare facts of men and women and babies, of course—probably only because she thought she must—but no more than the x, the y, and z.

  Not this. Not all of it.

  Annie almost giggled to think of Mrs. Ruskin and her pink cheeks that evening long ago. It had been their most hurried, most hushed, most painfully awkward conversation, up in Annie’s room. It was also the one Annie had pondered the most. Nothing had prepared her though for tonight. How you could be so close to someone: the startling warmth of being held, the shivery wonderment, the strangeness of it all. How she’d felt like someone else entirely—a grown woman. How she’d barely minded being uncovered in the presence of a man. Well, she’d minded, but she’d also marveled at how incredible it was to not be completely mortified. It had seemed a sort of small miracle: her doing anything like that with any man. Incredible.

  Jem’s words had trailed off long ago. The silence between them had grown thick with what he hadn’t said: I love you, Annie.

  She smiled softly to herself—a secret smile in the darkness. He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t read her face, couldn’t know what she was thinking. And she was glad. Because she knew things. Even if she had the words, she could never say them aloud. How could she?

  You don’t know it yet, but someday you’ll love me.

  You don’t know it yet, but we were meant to be together forever.

  We’re going to be a family.

  It was meant to be—from the first moment she saw him next to the church tent with Daniel and that awful, mean-eyed man, Major Creed. She hadn’t known it then herself. Or even yesterday. Jem hadn’t known it either, clearly. But heaven had. She believed it. And someday—she hoped soon—Jem would know it too.